NBC breaks Hulu

Way to take one for the team Hulu. The team of Screwed, Up, & Majorly inc. -who by the way has had a wonderful record on the internet, mainly propelled by the efforts of the RIAA and MPAA.

Hulu.com for those of you that don't fancy the TV on the PC, is an effort of NBC and some friends to bring sitcom joy to the internet masses, legally. And by all accounts they have succeed wonderfully. Generally speaking there isn't any criticism of Hulu. And that is a huge accomplishment, especially for something that a huge company has done. But it is easy to see why everyone likes it. All the episodes of all the shows are online, with decent quality, and limited advertisement. We get our shows and NBC gets their money. Textbook case of a win, win, win situation.

Unfortunately NBC's Pissed-Off-O-Meter was running low, and decided that all was going too well, so they decided to tinker. They were rewarded with the amounts of Jack and Pot of suck. You see the 4th season of The Office is coming out soon, so to promote sales they took down all of The Office videos except for four. Gone are all of the season 1, 2, 3, and most of season 4 episodes. So now if I want to watch one of the older episodes I have to "pirate" it. FYI NBC: You don't get ad revenues for me watching pirated versions of your stuff.

Oh, and yes I do have all three seasons of The Office on DVD already, and I am planning to buy the fourth. I just used Hulu to watch episodes on my laptop while I eat because I didn't want to mess with the discs.

And here is why what NBC did is a major bork: if the service provided isn't consistent, I won't use it. If all the episodes are there some days and all the episodes are gone other days, I won't bother. Because I know that all the episodes are on BitTorret all the time. I want to watch the shows that I want, when I want. And I thought that NBC got that. I guess not. Time to set sail to The Pirate Bay.